A Westminster Hall debate yesterday on Royal Mail privatisation has just caught my attention. As one of the people very closely involved with the Lib Dem policy of reforming the postal services industry and part privatising the Royal Mail, I am obviously pleased that our plans are being put into action. It made all those late nights slaving over a hot laptop and phone calls at midnight from Norman Lamb MP (then our Trade and Industry spokesman) worthwhile!
Yesterday's debate saw a contribution from David (call me Dave) Anderson, Labour MP for Blaydon, who interestingly described himself as part of the "political elite". Mr Anderson's first intervention in the debate involved a bit of foreigner bashing, raising the spectre of UK assets being sold to "foreign companies". This produced the response from Katy Clark, the Labour MP who called the debate, that foreign ownership "is not in the public interest." There was no justification for this and no evidence was put forward to support this claim. Perhaps the two "socialist" comrades could justify their Little England approach.
This bit of foreigner bashing is all the more interesting as two of the biggest manufacturers in our area, Nissan and Komatsu, are Japanese owned. I doubt the people who work there and who are Mr Anderson's constituents would share the view that foreign investment in businss and services in the UK "is not in the public interest."
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